posted on March 16, 2017
If you check out Paul M.’s Turo profile, you’ll notice that he has A LOT of cars — 29 that are active right now — and A LOT of trips — 460 today. He’s the top owner in Phoenix, where he lives, and if you’re like us, you might marvel at these numbers and wonder, “How can one man do so much?”
Paul, however, is not a lone ranger. He heard about Turo this past Fall from his brother-in-law Jason, who works at Costco. “There are so many people going through Costco everyday. I told him ‘You see more people in a day than I see in a year’.” Jason was always letting Paul know about new technology and apps that people were using, including Turo. At the time, Paul had a Honda Civic that was paid off, and he thought he’d try putting it on Turo. “I was a little nervous like any new owner,” Paul reports, but within a day of listing his car, it was rented for the entire month.
So Paul went to his wife and told her, “We need to put some more cars on here.” They took a trip to the dealership planning to buy one Prius, and drove away with two. Paul did some quick calculations and realized that renting out the cars for 14 days would have the payments on them covered. Pretty quickly he found himself in a cycle where he’d buy cars, rent them on Turo, and then he’d have no cars for the week, so he’d go out and buy more. He even got some minivans, thinking he could drive those when they weren’t rented, but they were both snapped up. “My other brother-in-law, Ron, saw what I was doing and he wanted in too. So he went out and bought a Corvette, a Tesla, and a BMW.” They decided to rent them on Paul’s profile, so they could manage the cars together, and soon the rest of their family wanted in as well.
In the beginning, it was a little overwhelming, and Paul says there were days when they were delivering cars all day from 6 am until midnight. Now, they’ve gotten smart about adjusting their minimum trip length and delivery. They also have five families within a mile radius involved in the business these days, so everybody chips in and it’s more manageable. Even so, they’re constantly washing cars and handing off keys. “We call it the Turo life,” he says. “We’re at the point now where the reviews are stacking up, and suddenly there’s hundreds of reviews about all the trips that people have taken in our cars, and in a way, it’s like you were there with them.”
Having shared his referral code with a solid number of his guests, Paul has racked up a decent cache of travel credit. He’s thinking that one of these days, when all of his cars are rented, he might treat himself to a swanky Turo ride.
Kamala Puligandla
Kamala Puligandla is a writer, editor, and bon vivant in LA. She is the author of two books, Zigzags and You Can Vibe Me On My Femmephone, and is always on the look-out for strange stories, excellent eats, and relaxing locales.
